This place needs no introduction, it is perhaps the most famous wine region in Australia. The Hunter Valley was Australia’s first wine region and vines planted in the 1860’s are still producing exceptional wines which is incredible. This area is world famous for it’s Sémillon, Jancis Robinson M.W. once said “Hunter Sémillon is Australia’s great gift to the wine world”. The guy in the photo on the left is fifth generation John Tyrrell of the famous Tyrrell family and they have been in

the area since the 1850’s and are still winning impressive awards for their wines. In 2012 their Vat 1 Sémillon and Vat 9 Shiraz jointly won the Wine of Provenance award at the Hunter Valley Wine Show, this denotes wines that have proven their ability to age and improve over time. Sémillon is an interesting grape as when young it has either lime and citrus or herbaceous and cut straw characters, then after adolescence from 2 - 5 years of age it starts to develop incredible lemon

curd and passionfruit or toasty lemon meringue pie and charred butter characteristics. Sweet Sémillon can develop apricot, pineapple and marmalade flavours and goes excellently with truffled pecorino as you can see above. This was the last stop of my trip across Australia and it was emotional driving out of the valley, during 10 weeks I drove 6000km’s and visited 80 vineyards which made for one incredible journey. I hope you enjoyed reading my wine journal.

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